The Story Behind Hanloh’s Indefatigable Lalita Kaewsawang 

February 20, 2024 – “I knew I wanted a restaurant from the time I was eight years old,” says Lalita Kaewsawang, the executive chef/owner of Santa Cruz’s Hanloh Thai Food. “From the time I was very young, I was fascinated by street food vendors, and I’d would watch them for hours. They specialize in just one or two dishes, so it’s very performative work, but they’re masters of organizational skills. They were some of my earliest teachers.”

Since October 2022, Kaewsawang has been serving up her particular brand of Thai cuisine at Bad Animal, a downtown Santa Cruz bookstore and natural wine bar. Hanloh is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday, and features nostalgic regional dishes inspired by Kaewsawang’s childhood in Thailand. 

Kaewsawang spent her first eight years in Bangkok, before she and her younger sister were sent to rural northeastern Thailand to be raised by their grandmother, a skilled home cook and the owner of a tropical fruit orchard. The property had no running water or electricity, and the experience instilled in Kaewsawang a profound respect for farmers. “Agriculture is a hard life,” she says. “The reality of that experience kept me grounded.” 

Although primarily self-taught through “trial and error,” Kaewsawang nevertheless acquired certain culinary fundamentals from her grandmother. “I remember watching her make curry paste using a mortar and pestle.” 

When she was thirteen, Kaewsawang and her sister went to live with their stepmother in Berkeley. Soon after, Kaewsawang began working at her stepmother’s Thai restaurant, but it wasn’t until she was a freshman at Wesleyan University in Connecticut that she began cooking her own dishes. 

“When I started college, I missed Thai food so much I started developing my own recipes and making my own curry paste in the dorms. That turned into a business called Thai Late Night, where I sold spring rolls and curry out of my room,” she says. 

After graduating from Wesleyan with a degree in Anthropology, Kaewsawang realized she wanted to pursue a culinary career. She began working in various aspects of the industry, including a stint on a biodynamic farm in Hawaii. She also cooked all over the United States, from New York and New Orleans to Los Angeles. “I was obsessed with fine dining in my mid-twenties,” Kaewsawang says of her time at restaurants like Chicago’s Michelin-starred Grace and Manresa in Los Gatos.

Kaewsawang started at Manresa in 2015, shortly after she moved to Santa Cruz where her boyfriend- now husband- was in a Ph. D program at UCSC. “I knocked on the back door of the restaurant get a job,” she says. “I wore my chef jacket and shoes, and carried my knife bag, resume, and cover letter, but I forgot to check the hours and it was closed that day. Luckily, (chef/owner) David (Kinch) was there fixing a sink. I said, ‘Hello Chef, I want to work here.’”

Kinch, for his part, remembers Kaewsawang as “curious about everything, unafraid and a very hard worker. There was a lot of talent in the kitchen when she was there; it was a tough, male-dominated, perfectionist environment and she took no crap from anyone. She fought very hard to be accepted professionally and for the opportunity that she felt she deserved. That’s my favorite memory of her. Lalita has the ability to make everything she cooks taste good, and it certainly shows at Hanloh.”

After leaving Manresa in 2017, Kaewsawang was uncertain what to do next. She started Hanloh as a weekend pop-up, but found the idea of owning her own business intimidating. “I knew I could do it, but I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have any startup capital.”

She took a part-time job as a legal assistant to pay the bills, and spent what little savings she had on a logo, tent, folding table and “the cheapest commissary kitchen” she could find. She named her pop-up “Hanloh, a common greeting when Thai folks pick up the phone,” she says.

Hanloh initially served the Thai street food that had so captivated Kaewsawang in her youth, and the concept resonated with locals. By 2019, she was doing weekly pop-ups at Sante Adairius brewery, and in late 2022, Bad Animal co-owner Andrew Sitvak offered Kaewsawang a year-long residency.

Despite being five months pregnant with her first child at the time, Kaewsawang jumped at the opportunity to have a 26-seat fixed space for Hanloh. By this time, her food had evolved, and while she still riffs on her beloved street food, the menu is more contemplative and reflective of her childhood and personal preferences, with locally sourced produce, seafood, and meat.

“At most Thai restaurants in the US, the menu is the same. I wanted my food to be distinctive,” she says. “I wanted to cook the things I like to eat and loved growing up, like grilled chicken liver. If I’m missing a steamed fish dish I had as a kid, I’ll try to recreate it. But the menu is more representative of Bangkok middle class cuisine, and northeastern Thailand.”

Bangkok attracts immigrants from all over Asia, “so the food is very much a melting pot. You’ll find influences from China, Vietnam, India…that’s the type of food I do at Hanloh,” says Kaewsawang, referring to dishes like ob Woonsen, cooked in a clay pot, and roti, a savory or sweet crepe stuffed with various fillings (her mother is a roti vendor in Bangkok). 

Signature dishes include mieng som-o, a northeastern dish traditionally made with various aromatics like herbs, pomelo, galangal, shrimp paste, shallots, peanuts, toasted coconut, and chili pounded into a paste and wrapped in wild betel leaves. At Hanloh, peppery nasturtium leaves stand in for the betel, and Kaewsawang’s variation on the northeastern street food dish khao mun gai (chicken fat rice) swaps charcoal-grilled king trumpet mushrooms from Far West Fungi for the meat. 

There are also treats like steamed Monterey black cod in lime and bird’s eye chili broth, and gai tod, double-fried chicken thighs marinated in coriander and garlic. Gaeng laung, a yellow, turmeric-based curry with fried tofu, crispy shallots and braised cabbage embodies the taste of Thailand, thanks to the addition of fresh, delicately perfumed makrut lime peel and leaf.

Makrut lime is difficult to find fresh; Kaewsawang obtains hers from Pleasure Point Orchard, a backyard grower in Santa Cruz. She also trolls the local farmers markets, sourcing product from the likes of Dirty Girl Produce, Pinnacle Farms, Live Earth Farm, and Ocean2Table. While Kaewsawang sources traditional ingredients like coconut milk, fish sauce, and rice from Thailand for the sake of authenticity, she’s adamant about quality and sustainability. Squid, for example, won’t appear on the menu unless she’s certain its sourced and processed locally [most Monterey Bay squid is processed in China or Vietnam before being shipped back to the United States).  

“Hanloh is Thai food with a local connection,” says Kaewsawang. “In college, I’d just shop for ingredients like Napa cabbage at the Asian market, but now, I’m able to use heirloom Arrowhead cabbage from Windmill Farm. It feels nice to support our foodshed.” 

Hanloh’s initial residency at Bad Animal was staggeringly successful—so much so that just six weeks after giving birth, Kaewsawang was back in the kitchen logging 40-hour work weeks. “I have a good team [including chef de cuisine Nicholas Jiwoo Hahn] and a good business partner,” she says. “Our kitchen is really small, so we need to keep the menu tight, and we’re on a quarterly lease, which lessens the pressure but also motivates me.”

That lease was renewed in December, so there’s still time to experience Hanloh if you haven’t been able to snag a table at the popular restaurant. Bad Animal is also getting ready to debut a permanent parklet with 16 patio seats; an indoor expansion will be completed later this year,” says Sivak, adding, “It’s easy for us to see why the community response (to Hanloh) has been so overwhelming. Chef Kaewsawang is a rare talent with tremendous drive and an unbelievable crew, and her food has inspired a deeper and more focused curation of our wine list. Her star is burning brighter than ever, and we couldn’t be happier about the collaboration.” 

Despite her success, Kaewsawang, now the mother of a 14-month-old daughter, admits she has periods of burnout. “It’s very hard to be a chef, let alone a female chef raising a family,’ she says. “But I feel like I have a gift, and I want to be a role model for my daughter.”